How mobile apps can help manage your fleet team’s wellbeing

A happy, healthy workforce is a productive one, with employees’ physical and mental wellbeing vital to an organisations’ financial health.

But how can a fleet manager ensure their remote workforce are staying healthy while they’re out on the road? The answer is the humble app, which has become as important a wellbeing accessory as the yoga mat.

Here are four apps to help your drivers stay happy and healthy behind the wheel – from helping them relax to keeping them fit – and in turn promoting business health alongside their wellbeing.

Modern life has plunged us all into something of a sleep crisis. An addiction to screens alongside not enough fresh air and exercise, and a whole host of other bad habits, means we’re all apparently sleep starved.

This is perhaps even more true for fleet drivers who often spend long hours behind a wheel, stay in unfamiliar places, and work shifts. All of this can make relaxing and getting the right amount of sleep difficult.

Having an app to help you sleep is a bit of a contradiction because most experts say that to get a good night’s rest you need to stop looking at devices well before bedtime.

However, this particular app (there’s also a website: https://www.calm.com/ ) doesn’t need you to look at it at bedtime. You can use it to practice meditation exercises while you’re awake to help you de-stress. And when it comes time to turn in, it will read bedtime stories conceived for adults to help you drift off.

MyFitnessPal’s main claim to fame is that it will sync with the growing number of wearables available that add your activity to your food journal and let you know if you are doing the right amount of activity for the calories you consume. Originally aimed at people looking to drop a few pounds, it’s also hugely useful for users who just want to keep on top of nutrition and perhaps find motivation for a healthier lifestyle all-round.

But the app is much more than that, and it doesn’t depend on you having any other gadgets. So if you aren’t a fan of the Fitbit or jazzed about Jawbone, don’t worry. In fact, because the app sits on your phone, which is likely to have some pedometer data on it anyway, it can still make basic energy calculations for you.

Where MyFitnessPal wins is that it gives you a food journal that will tell you if your diet is a bit too heavy in fat or sugar and whether or not you’re getting the right amount of vitamins and minerals. It has a large, searchable database of recipes and food suggestions as well as access to a vibrant community who discuss anything from weight loss to their favourite TV shows.

Without access to an onsite gym or a spacious lounge to roll out your yoga mat, people can often struggle to squeeze in exercise. That’s doubly true when you’re tied to a desk or behind a wheel for much of the working day.

Increasingly popular are so-called high intensity interval workouts, or HIIT. These are supposed to squeeze the impact of an hour-long workout into less than 10 minutes. The problem is that for people who feel their level of fitness is average, they can look a bit daunting.

The Johnson & Johnson 7 minute workout app does feature some intense workouts, but there are also sessions for complete beginners along with videos of how to do the exercises and a link to your phone’s music selection to help you get going.

The app doesn’t ask you to use any special equipment, although it does suggest a chair might come in handy. Anything chair height would do!

The problem with modern life is that there’s just so much going on. Trying to juggle all your commitments both in work and at home can be incredibly stressful. We’re often told it helps to be organised but the problem isn’t just making a list of things to do, it’s making sure everyone else we live and work with knows what is going on too.

Remember the Milk is an app and website that links up all your calendars, notes, Skype logs, computer to-dos – whatever you’ve got going on in whichever programme, it will link it all together for you.

You can even link it to other people’s calendars. Getting all your information in one place means fewer surprises, fewer logistical nightmares and, generally, fewer headaches.

Supporting the mental and physical health of your fleet drivers isn’t easy from a far. But encouraging your remote workforce to monitor their wellbeing with the help of apps can give them control of their health. And what’s good for your workers’ health is good for your business’ health – with fewer sick days, increased productivity (healthy employees are higher performing employees[1]) and a lower staff turnover – which is all good news for your bottom line.